Here are the standings for all participants in the 2010 JPA PinGolf Tournament. I look forward to doing it again next League season which starts in early September. Many thanks to all who played.

1st Jim Fordham
2nd Sanjay Shah
3rd Kevin Smigel
4th Ed Zeltmann
5th Paul Drabik
6th (TIE) Steven Bowden
6th (TIE) Frank Romero
8th Koi Morris 
9th Mike Field
10th Joe Oesterling

                          

After reigning for 1 1/2 years (3 league seasons) as the champion of the Jersey Pinball Association, I will have to give up my title to another great player, Jim Fordham. He was victorious in the League Final, 22-17, to win the league championship. He has set a goal for himself to qualify for next year’s IFPA World Championships. With his excellent finishes in Pinferno 3 and the Allentown Open, he is well on his way. I’m going to have to step up my game if I want to claim the New Jersey State Championship at July’s New Jersey Pinball Open. Congratulations to you, Jim. You are wearing the target now. Wear it with pride because we are all gunning for you.

As a side note, Jim is also starting new pinball website and forum. I will not post the link here yet because his site is still in beta. However, once it is officially live, you will know about it here.

                          

Spring 2010 JPA season ends on May 26, 2010

                          

In the pinball league at Amsterdam Billiards in NYC, I was able to post a record of 6 wins and 3 losses, which was good for third place overall. I’m generally happy with that even though I wish I could have done better, of course. We played Big Buck Hunter and Twilight Zone.

The Big Buck Hunter machine is one of those games in which it is difficult to score well, but you don’t know how difficult this specific machine is until you start playing.  There is the titular “big buck,” that you need to hit to start multiball and get jackpots, that goes back and forth on a track diagonally, in the middle of the playfield. However, this particular buck seemed to only register hits consistently if you hit it on the front edge. Many players would get frustrated when they made a solid hit in the center of the target, only to receive no points. This not only added to the difficulty of the game, it required players to have good patience and to control their play. Let me clarify that the target was not broken at all, it was just difficult in that you had to make a more accurate shot to score. It made the game better for tournament or league play.

The Powerball!

The other machine, Twilight Zone, is already notorious for being a challenging game. All seasoned players know this going in, but this Twilight Zone had a special feature: A slot machine kick-out that would throw the ball in a semi-random direction. Sometimes the kick-out would behave well in that you could dead-flipper-pass the ball from right to left. Other times it would kick-out the ball almost straight down the middle causing the player to have to perform an emergency slap-save to stay alive. Or, it might launch the ball harshly to the right, toward the right slingshot or outlane, where chaos would soon follow. You as the player, could not depend on which of these events would happen. Most players chose to try a reflex shot (think of a batter trying to hit a curve ball) and deal with whatever happened next. Sometimes I tried to live catch the ball, with mixed results. I don’t think anyone made it to the Lost in the Zone wizard mode this season, because of that wild kick-out.

One of the reasons why Twilight Zone is (as of this date) my second favorite pinball game is the Powerball. The Powerball is a ceramic ball which is the same size as the other metallic balls, but it is lighter and moves much faster than normal. When you get the Powerball out of the gumball machine, all of the geometry of the game changes because now you have to account for the increased speed of the Powerball. I have a love/hate relationship with the Powerball because it makes an already difficult shot, the right loop/gumball shot, even harder to make. If you miss, your ball could be over before you realize it. However, making the gumball shot starts Powerball Mania which is a feature where you can earn hundreds of millions of points. The Powerball can instantly turn the tide of a match which is why you are never really out of the game if you can get the Powerball out.

Overall, it was another fantastic pinball season and I look forward to starting up again next season, which I believe will be in September.

                          

Click here for the complete standings [PDF]

Thanks to the recent sponsorship of the tournament by Jim F. and more entries, the PinGolf Prize Pool is now at $125.00 as of today. It looks like Whitewater is becoming the easiest game of the five to get a hole-in-one as Paul D. scores an “ace” in his entry. Updated standings can be found at the Jersey Pinball Association PinGolf web page.

Click here to go to the JPA PinGolf page

                          

Spring 2010 JPA season started on March 10, 2010

Click here for the complete standings [PDF]

The entries have started to come in for the Jersey Pinball Association’s Spring 2010 PinGolf Tournament. Plus two people have confirmed a sponsorship so the prize pool will increase again soon. We also saw the first hole-in-one which was achieved by Sanjay S. on Whitewater. Initially, players felt the target scores were to high to reach. Soon they found that, if they obtained and use their extra balls properly, the scores are in fact reachable. I will make an effort to post information on the JPA PinGolf Tournament on rec.games.pinball as well as on the 8 on the Break Facebook page and Twitter. Hopefully, this will foster more participation in this tournament.

Click here to go to the JPA PinGolf page

                          

The Jersey Pinball Association is beginning a new season of competitive pinball play this Wednesday, March 10. Among the games available are: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Whitewater, Demolition Man, Monster Bash, Fish Tales, FunHouse, The Addams Family, Star Wars: Episode One, and Attack from Mars. Along with traditional league play, there will be another side tournament in the style of “Pinball Golf” where you have up to ten balls to reach a target score. Each entry builds up a cash jackpot which I will award at the end of the season. PinGolf replaces the Gauntlet from last year. I hope that many players, from inside and outside of the JPA League, will try to qualify for the PinGolf Final so that there will be a huge jackpot prize pool.

Read more about it here.

                          

Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images

But… what about nudging the machine? If you TILT, do you get shocked? The “Battle the Power” feature on Twilight Zone would be a Zen experience with this hookup. Thanks to Jesus Diaz on Gizmondo for finding this. By the way, Jesus and his wife have joined the NYC Pinball League at Amsterdam Billiards. Good luck to both of you this season. (From CeBit in Germany)

                          

Anytime my “home arcade” is featured, I have to post about it. Once again Nick! does a great job detailing some of the changes that have happened at “The Break” since his last visit. I wish he would visit during one of our league nights (Wednesdays) so that he, and his crew, could meet some of the pinball regulars. Speaking of which, the next season of the Jersey Pinball Association is set to start in early March. I’m sure that I speak for all of the members of the League when I say that pinball players of all skill levels are welcome to compete.

                          

Pin-Maine-ia pictures by Douglas Mahar

• Congratulations to Nicola Pierobon, 2009 Pin-Maine-ia New England Pinball Champion!
  

• Pin-Maine-ia was amazing this past weekend! Great performances by Nicola Pierobon, Jim Fordham, Ed Zeltman, Josh Henderson, Trent Augenstein

• Thanks to everyone who helped make PinMaineia ’09 a fantastic event, including J.R. “BallyMan”,Scott P, “TheFoodCourt”, Gregg G on the mic.

• Also thanks to Bowen K and his SwissManager software, and all of the 66+(!) Pin-Maine-ia competitors and many more spectators.

Pin-Maine-ia 2009 video Coming Soon…

                          

• League Commissioner Max “Pinball” directs the League

• League play is on Williams Attack from Mars and Williams’ Terminator 2: Judgment Day